Janice Raymond

For the Playboy Playmate, see Janice Raymond (model).
Janice Raymond
Born Janice G. Raymond
(1943-01-24) 24 January 1943
Nationality American
Occupation Author, professor, activist
Employer University of Massachusetts Amherst
Known for Lesbian radical feminist activism
Website janiceraymond.com

Janice G. Raymond (born January 24, 1943) is an American lesbian radical feminist activist known for her work against violence, sexual exploitation and the "medical abuse" of women, as well as for her controversial writings and work in opposition to the transgender community. She is also the author of five books and multiple articles, translated into several languages, on issues ranging among transsexualism, violence against women, women’s health, feminist theory and bio-medicine. She has published numerous articles on prostitution and sex trafficking. She lectures internationally on many of these topics[1] via Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Her statements on transsexuality and transsexuals have been criticized by many in the LGBT and feminist communities as transphobic and as constituting hate-speech.[2][3][4][5]

Academic career

Janice G. Raymond is professor emerita of women's studies and medical ethics at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She was a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst from 1978 on. When she retired from the University in 2002, the Boston Globe included her among the several “marquee talents” lost to the campus.[6]

Since 2000, Raymond has also served as an Adjunct Professor of International Health at Boston University School of Public Health.[7] She has been the Five College (Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst) Professor of Women’s Studies and Medical Ethics (1975–78), Visiting Research Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1990–91), Visiting Professor at the University of Linkoping in Sweden (1995), and Lecturer at the State Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN Sunan Kalijaga), Center for Women Studies, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2002).

Advocacy work

From 1994–2007, Raymond was the Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW).[1] She is currently on the Board of Directors of CATW.[1]

During her tenure, CATW expanded its international work, especially in the Baltics and in Eastern Europe.[1]

In January 2004, Dr. Raymond testified before the European Parliament on “The Impact of the Sex Industry in the EU.” In 2003, Raymond testified before a subcommittee of the United States Congress on “The Ongoing Tragedy of International Slavery and Human Trafficking.” She was an NGO member of the U.S. Delegation to the Asian Regional Initiative Against the Trafficking of Women and Children (ARIAT), Manila, the Philippines, hosted by the governments of the Philippines and the United States. In 1999–2000, as an NGO representative to the UN Transnational Crime Committee, in Vienna, she helped define the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.[1]

Personal life

Janice Raymond is a former member of the Sisters of Mercy.[8] She later left the convent[9] and is now an open lesbian.[10][11]

Education

Janice Raymond received a Ph.D. in Ethics and Society from Boston College in 1977, her Masters in Religious Studies from Andover Newton Theological School in 1971, and her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Salve Regina College in 1965.

Awards and honors

In 2007, Dr. Raymond received the “International Woman Award, 2007” from the Zero Tolerance Trust, in Glasgow, Scotland.[12]

In 1986, Raymond’s book, A Passion for Friends: a Philosophy of Female Friendship, was named the best non-fiction book of the year by the UK magazine, City Limits.[13]

Raymond has been the recipient of grants from the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. National Institute of Justice, the Ford Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Norwegian Organization for Research and Development (NORAD), and UNESCO.[1]

Publications

In her 1993 book, Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women’s Freedom, Raymond examined how reducing infertility to a disease in the West has helped to promote the use of new reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization and surrogacy. At the same time, women’s fertility is rejected in the East promoting technologies of forced sterilization, sex predetermination and female feticide. The book was one of the first to look at the international reproductive trafficking of women and children as organized by the adoption, organ and surrogacy trade.[14]

Women as Wombs, as the San Francisco Chronicle reviewer wrote, “is a strongly written, carefully reasoned critique of ...’reproductive liberalism’.”[14] The Library Journal reviewer stated that “...it is hard to resist her conclusion that many reproductive experiments can represent another form of violence against women.”[15]

Raymond’s 1986 book, A Passion for Friends: a Philosophy of Female Affection, deviates from her work on medical technologies into the realm of feminist friendship as a basis for a broader feminist theory and politics. Carolyn Heilbrun in The Women’s Review of Books wrote: “Hers is a brave undertaking, and she begins by facing the central issue of women’s friendships: the necessary relation of these friendships to power and the public sphere...Raymond’s is the most probing and honorable discussion of female friendships we have...”[16] Published also in a UK edition, A Passion for Friends received the City Limits award for the Best Non-Fiction Book of 1986.[13] Novelist Jeanette Winterson wrote that “It’s a complex, food-for thought book that rewards the time and concentration that it needs.”[17]

Writings on transsexualism

In 1979, Raymond published a book on transsexualism called The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male.[18] Controversial even today, it looked at the role of transsexualism – particularly psychological and surgical approaches to it – in reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes, the ways in which the medical-psychiatric complex is medicalizing “gender identity” and the social and political context that has helped spawn transsexual treatment and surgery as normal and therapeutic medicine.

Raymond maintains that transsexualism is based on the "patriarchal myths" of "male mothering," and "making of woman according to man's image." She claims this is done in order "to colonize feminist identification, culture, politics and sexuality," adding: "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves .... Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive."[19]

These views on transsexuality have been criticized by many in the LGBT and feminist communities as extremely transphobic and as constituting hate-speech against transsexual men and women.[2][3][4][5]

In The Transsexual Empire Janice Raymond includes sections on Sandy Stone, a trans woman who had worked as a sound engineer for Olivia Records, and Christy Barsky, accusing both of creating divisiveness in women's spaces.[20] These writings have been heavily criticized as personal attacks on these individuals.[21]

Writings on prostitution and sex trafficking

In 2000, Raymond co-published one of the first studies on trafficking in the United States entitled Sex Trafficking in the United States: Links Between International and Domestic Sex Industries.[22] In 2002, she directed and co-authored a multi-country project in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Venezuela and the United States, entitled Women in the International Migration Process: Patterns, Profiles and Health Consequences of Sexual Exploitation.[23]

Among the many articles she has published, her work entitled “Ten Reasons for Not Legalizing Prostitution and a Legal Response to the Demand for Prostitution”[24] has been translated into over 10 languages. This essay looks at the legislative models that have legalized or decriminalized the prostitution industry and the rationales supporting them, and argues that legitimating the sex trade has made its harm to women invisible. Raymond supports the alternative legal model of rejecting legalization and decriminalization of the sex industry, and penalizing the male demand for buying women and children for sexual exploitation.[24]

Bibliography

Books

Book chapters

Articles

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Janice Raymond – Coalition Against Trafficking of Women". Catwinternational.org. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
  2. 1 2 Rose, Katrina C. (2004) "The Man Who Would be Janice Raymond." Transgender Tapestry 104, Winter 2004
  3. 1 2 Julia Serano (2007) Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, pp. 233–234
  4. 1 2 Namaste, Viviane K. (2000) Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People, pp. 33–34.
  5. 1 2 Hayes, Cressida J., 2003, "Feminist Solidarity after Queer Theory: The Case of Transgender," in Signs 28(4):1093–1120.
  6. ↑ Russell, Jenna. “Professors’ Retirement Rattle UMass.” Boston Globe, June 22, 2002, p. B1 Metro/Region. June 10, 1979, p. 11
  7. ↑ "BU 2009-10 School of Public Health Bulletin – Faculty". Bu.edu. 2009-12-02. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
  8. ↑ A Passion for Friends – Google Books. Books.google.com. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
  9. ↑ Janice Raymond, 2001, A Passion For Friends, p. 79.
  10. ↑ Janice Raymond, 2001, A Passion For Friends, p. 14.
  11. ↑ Cheshire Calhoun, 1994, "Separating Lesbian Theory from Feminist Theory," in Ethics, vol. 104, no. 3.
  12. ↑ Cate Devine (2007-05-18). "The woman risking her life to end a modern slave trade". Herald Scotland. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
  13. 1 2 City Limits, 16–23 October 1986, p. 93.
  14. 1 2 Kaufmann, K. “Reproductive Technology and Women’s Rights.” San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, January 9, 1994.
  15. ↑ Beverly Miller, Book Review of Women as Wombs, Library Review Journal, November 1, 1993.
  16. ↑ Carolyn Heilbrun, “The Future of Friendship,” The Women’s Review of Books, June, 1986.
  17. ↑ Jeanette Winterson, Short Review of A Passion for Friends, Time Out, June 4–10, 1986.
  18. ↑ "book". Worldcat.org. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
  19. ↑ Raymond, Janice. (1994). The Transsexual Empire, p. 104
  20. ↑ Raymond, Janice. (1994). The Transsexual Empire, pp. 101–102.
  21. ↑ Hubbard, Ruth, 1996, "Gender and Genitals: Constructs of Sex and Gender," in Social Text 46/47, p. 163.
  22. ↑ http://action.web.ca/home/catw/readingroom.shtml?x=16939
  23. ↑ "Traffick Study TOC PGMKR" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-03-23.
  24. 1 2 "Coalition Against Trafficking in Women". Action.web.ca. Retrieved 2010-03-23.

External links

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